


Demyx meets the superior.

by Rennll



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: First Impressions, First Meetings, Gen, Kingdom Hearts Headcanons, Pre-Kingdom Hearts I, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-27 15:31:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19015729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rennll/pseuds/Rennll
Summary: How should you react to a man that looks through your skin and sees the secrets that you don't remember yourself?





	Demyx meets the superior.

He stumbled into whiteness. Nothing but a marble floor, stretching flat and endless in every direction. His legs trembled, had only himself to lean on, and “Himself” was missing substance, not having as much as a name to his person. He could either collapse or move until he found something. The terrifying, blue-haired man who carried the scent of a feral animal, the sort of tang that remained in the fur on stuffed mantelpieces even after they had gathered trophyroom-dust for decades, must have brought him here for a reason. He couldn’t have thrown him into this emptiness to face an excruciating death of starvation and excessive boredom, right?  
   A tremble coursed through him.  
   – Come on, check if there’s something beyond this void before jumping to conclusions, he told his legs who agreed that they were steady enough to manage that, though also proposed a nap after he had checked.   
Preferably week-long, they sure felt like taking a week off after today.  
How long would he need to walk before he could say he had checked? Perhaps when he grew tired of the clacking of his heels, the only existing sound apart from his breathing. Speaking of inhaling air: Never before had he been so acutely aware that air should be brim with smells and tastes, whether it be the burnt tinge that the wind carried from a city on a hot summer-day, or the freshness that filled your nose when you got near the sea, and he was only dipping a toe into the pool of varying flavours of air that all living beings enjoyed. Here the air was empty, an emptiness that sucked the energy out instead of revitalizing him every time he opened his mouth to let a treacherous breath inside.  
   Was this how it felt like to walk in a dessert? This place wasn’t particularly hot though. Not cold either. Just … nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.  
   Soon his mind would start conjure mirages of something just to be relieved of this nothing. It might have already begun, since the road ahead seemed to have stood up on it’s feet (Wait, roads don’t have feet.) like a pillar.  
   Only when he neared the mirage and it did not disappear, did he begin sprinting towards it, not stopping until he stood with his head tilted back and mouth gaping at the pillar stretching maybe forty meter into the air. He brushed his hand over the white stone shaping it, the same as the rest of the world, a circle of perfect proportions, smooth like glass, and wondered if it would require three or four of him, stretching their arms outward and brushing fingertips, to reach all around it.  
   Something glimpsed in the corner of his eye. He turned his head to the side and gawked. Those things could not have been standing there this whole time, he would have seen them. Twin-pillars, just as towering and pristine. He counted to eight in total, standing identical distances apart, creating an arch that faced inward, a ring with a piece of it removed. In contrast to the rest of the symmetry, all of them had different length, pillars number three and four, counted from where he was standing, being the tallest, while the shortest right across him, barely reached up to half their height. When studying the opposite pillars, he noticed that it’s crests had an unusual shape, almost throne-like as if you were supposed to sit on it and lean back against a backrest.  
   – Wow, he said.  
   – Wow, indeed.  
   Skipping into the air like a kangaroo on a pogo-stick, he whirled around towards the man that had snuck up on him as unnoticeable as a pillar; who faced him with the calm of an evening breeze.  
Wonder if he’s done a lot of surfing in his life, was the first thought that popped into his head as he took in the sight of the skin-colour and shaggy hair of the other. Both looked like he had been exposed to unrelenting sunlight days without end, until the skin turned brown as chestnut and every strand of hair was bleached. It was a look he automatically associated with surfers he had seen in the kind of worlds where he didn’t mind staying in for prolonged stretches of time, people who spent every day running around on a sweltering sunny beach and swimming in the tumbling ocean.  
   That level of exercise and this person definitely shared a history, went his second thought, as his gaze swept over a Olympus-statue-chest snug inside that black coat.  
   Black coat. This man wore the same clothing as the wild-man who had kidnapped him. The wild-man and himself actually, since he had been forced to change into an identical black coat before being put here. In any case, this meant that the surfer-looking man and the wild-man was in league with eachother. He cowered before the unblinking gaze leveled at him, then stopped doing so because this man didn’t radiate danger in the same way as the former.  
   Also his eyes were weird, a yellow colour that he had only seen before on monkeys like tamarins and gibbons, treading the line between the animalistic, purely-instinctual topaz and the reflective depths of a human-being. Black rings, surrounding the pupils like a halo, lent his gaze a hawk-piercing intensity, though his blend between person and predator-in-person-disguise differentiated from wild-man, who had been collected the way a mad-dog acted calm to lure the one he wanted to bite close enough for him to aim at the throat. This man struck him more as a contently dozing lion. Sure, a lion could kill him with one loose jab of a paw, but - Oh man, this one found lifting those an effort right now. His stomach was full, and the sun made his pelt so cozy that he would even ignore a bee stinging him.  
   The image of a large cat did fit the man. When he tilted his head and finally blinked for the first time, the hair rustling over his shoulders could be taken for a milky mane.  
   – Did Saïx tell you what we are? he said, deep voice following the lion-theming and flowing out of his lips like syrup.  
   As if broken out of a spell, he became aware of ogling and looked away to the side, an uh-sound droning from his mouth.  
   – The guy with hair like a blue brush-broom? Don’t know if I listened to him, really. Who are you guys?  
   – We are nothing. Like you are nothing.  
   The wild-man had actually said something rude like that.  
   – Nobody, that was what wi… that other guy called me.  
   – We are nobodies without existences, without hearts.  
   His hands flew to his mouth a second too late to stop a snort erupting.  
   – That’s ridiculous. What does that even mean? That I don’t have blood floating through my veins, that I don’t have emotions?  
   Something clicked into place in his thoughts as he said the latter, however his mouth continued to move and his gestures growing larger as he gained velocity in his monologue.  
   – See, I’m smiling at what you are saying right now: One must feel feelings to smile. I’ve laughed sometimes … used to a lot anyway; I know what things I like and don’t like, and I sobbed when I scrubbed my knee that one time … I know I was sad for sure.  
   – This you know, yet you don’t recall your name, the man said, his manner could have been both sympathetic or mocking, hard to tell one or the other when his expression stayed as permanent as a rock in the river of words coursing over him.  
   He flinched.  
   – How do you know that?  
   – It’s transparent. What we have in common, our lost selves.  
   The man took a step forward; he mirrored taking one backwards, feeling as if physically pushed away by a magnetic field surrounding the man.  
   – Because you were lost, you gravitated towards this world, towards others like you, looking for belonging, the man continued.  
   – I … I dunno.  
   – Do not see me as your enemy, I’m rejected by the world as you are, the same forces seek to pull me into oblivion.  
   – Reject…?  
   He paused and looked at the man, studying him. – What was it that he was looking for though? One thing he knew: this would be the first time that he met other people who leaped between worlds the same way he did, that said they were the same, and did not find it surprising that a person could lose their name like you did a wallet.  
   – Oblivion … Are you talking about the tearing that happens?  
   – Possibly, care to elaborate?  
   – Um … I mostly notice it when I travel between worlds, like pieces of me are pulled away by the darkness there. Lately I’ve tried to skim down on world-skipping. My name disappeared that way, I think. Sort of … dropped off me.  
   The man nodded as if comprehending this as something perfectly normal, like getting holes in your teeth when you ate too much candy.  
   – Unfortunately, this process is not limited to the dark corridors. While it may sometimes be beneath our notice, we nobodies are constantly enduring a strain on the forms we have taken. Eventually all that we are, will disintegrate.  
   – Man, are you serious?  
   He did not want to believe what terrifying things this guy said. Hard when he talked like the personification of certainty.  
   – Yes, the man said, a single affirmation to beat down that certainty like a nail in the coffin he had condemned a person’s continued existence into. Though we might still be allowed to last, if Kingdom Hearts is completed.  
   – Kingdom hearts?  
   – What that is shall be made clear, if you join our organization.  
   – Whoa, are you saying that this whole sicking monsters onto me, kidnapping me and bringing me here, was all part of your recruitment-process. Why did you not ask from the beginning?  
   – You would have to pose that question to Saïx. What will your answer be?  
   – Wait, I don’t know … Like, what’s in it for me?  
   The man’s eyebrows shoot up, as if surprised that he needed to recite the proposal’s advantages outloud.  
   – I can bring out your power; I can tell you your name.  
   – My name, you know my name?  
   – I do.  
   – That … sounds good.  
   Should he act harder to get? Common-sense told him that when a shady person asked him to join his organization, he should regard him with suspicion. Though there could be some good things he missed out on if he turned down the offer. That possibility of not having to be ripped apart by cosmic-forces for one. Had the man lied? What if he hadn’t? As his brain started to heat like an overworked computer, he could only conclude that it wasn’t made for measuring the pros and cons of a decision, and that knowing his name would be nice.  
   – Does that mean you will join our cause? the man asked.  
   – Y … Yeah.  
   – Do you swear fealty.  
   – Sure, I swear.  
   – Good, the man breathed the word in a seemingly pleased manner. Shall we begin by giving you a weapon?  
   If he could choose, he rather they skipped that part and moved straight to the name, however as the man extended an arm and stepped towards him, he found his tongue staying in his mouth rather than speaking against it. He bit into it lightly to help himself stand unmoving as the man approached, even as he noticed a tingly sensation throughout his body, as if his blood got jittery.  
   When they stood close enough that the feeling had been replaced by an throb, one step away from becoming painful, the man, for once, made a sound, a tiny surprised outcry. Pulling his hand back, he held it up to study it as if he had bumped his fingers against something invisible and inconceivable. From the faint smile of his lips, the man was decidedly the kind who naturally blended confusion with amusement.  
   – What happened just now? he asked the man.  
   – Something tickles.  
   – Tickles?  
   – Ah, I see. The man turned and extended his hand towards him once more. You retain many bubbles within you.   
   As if his words were a prophecy a burst of bubbles begun materializing around the man’s arm. Glowing blue and frothing with raw water-magic it swirled from the base of his shoulder to the edge of his palm like a bodiless snake riled into the most fevered of moods, expanding out from the man’s hands into a maelstrom, extending from the floor, up towards the top of the pillars, then it disappeared as quickly as it had come. In his hand the man held a guitar-like instrument, blue like the water that had spawned it, and shaped vaguely like a pear. The sight of it’s gleaming nine strings made the onlooker’s fingers itch, and he gawked in awe, having witnessed the most impressing pull-a-rabbit-out-of-the-hat-trick of his life.  
   Grabbing the instrument by it’s throat the man hefted it upward, holding it as if it was a weird-looking club or axe.  
   – Not what I was expecting, he commented.  
   – It’s a zitar, not a weapon.  
   The man, who looked as if he had been about to experimentally swing the instrument, stopped and turned to look at him.  
   – Zitar, a type of string-instrument, related to the guitar, often used by composers from Agrabah. (Where did this knowledge come from?)  
   Ah-ing the man turned the zitar around, regarding it with new eyes, then extended it towards him.  
   – Um …  
   Calmly reaching out and grasping something from this man was not something his hands felt ready to do.  
   – It belongs to you, the man insisted, holding the instrument out further.  
   – What do you mean? You made it.  
   Stepping forward the man decidedly put the zitar in his hands, him grabbing on to it reflexively and jolting when a finger brushed against his skin.  
   – What I did was channeling power belonging to you and creating a conduit. As long as you fight for us, this weapon serve you.  
   – Not exactly a weapon, but okay, he mumbled.  
   Nodding the man put some distance between them, his magically conjuring hand raised.  
   – The second thing I promised, he said, then the hand did it’s thing and light sprung into existence before the palm.  
   Flinching as if it would attack him, the nameless person stared at the letters appearing and bobbing in the air, each like a hologram from a world of scientific wonder.  
   – Is that my name? he asked, reaching out until his fingertips were a centimeter away from brushing against the gleaming image of a D.  
   – It sounds like the name of a stranger, doesn’t it?  
   As if he burned himself on a stove, he pulled his hand back, turning to look at the man, who was wearing a smile that did not reach his eyes and – Man, those eyes had become burning gold. He turned towards the floating letters, repeating the name again and again in his head.  
   – I guess not really, he mumbled. Since I can’t remember anyone calling me by it.  
   – A name like this fitted the person you once were, not the nobody you have become.  
   Such a mean thing to say. If the intensity the man gave off hadn’t made his mouth uncooperatively leaden, he would have protested. The man did not look like he meant to be mean though, his eyes, which could probably set souls on fire, gazing at him with understanding. The kind of understanding that could be entirely off the mark, like if someone become convinced that the sun was colored green, and still, if this man claimed so, he suspected that he himself would start believing that the sun looked green as a pea.  
   – Once I called myself Ansem, however after forming the organization that name no longer reflected what I was and thus I became Xemnas. I could help you gain a new identity the same way.  
   It was one of those propositions that you agreed to because you had forgot how to say no.  
   – Why not.  
   Sweeping his arm to the side, the letters started swirling around eachother, speed picking up, becoming dizzying, until the man gestured again and the letters stopped in a new order, glowing a shining yellow. An X had appeared at the end, a cutting appendix to the elmleaf-soft remnants of his old name.  
   – Demyx, how does that sound?


End file.
